


Guts and Glory

by Noscere



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alien Biology, Anatomy, For Science!, Gen, Genetics, Physiology, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 12:57:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: This is a story of a woman, a scalpel, and a love of biology.





	Guts and Glory

**Rat**

 

The creature before her stinks of formaldehyde. Its white fur is soaked in isopropanol, slicked back in fat teardrop-shaped clumps.

This is Moira Vahlen’s first dissection. She has cut flesh from bone and separated muscle from sinew before, but this is the first time an animal has died for the sole purpose of being rendered into its component parts under her hands.

She says a silent thanks to the rat lying on the dissection tray. Her lab partner names it Wilhelm. When Vahlen points out the obvious lack of a scrotum near the tail, Heidi amends the name to Wilhelma.

“You go first.” Heidi shudders and hands the pair of scissors over. “You’ll have more fun than me.”

Vahlen nods and accepts the tools. She looks at the instructions. The layers of muscle, skin and fur are all quite thin on the belly. If she delves too deep, she’ll puncture the intestines. Vahlen is to cut up from the genitals to the hard ridge of the sternum. The thoracic cavity, containing the heart and lungs, is to be left intact for another day.

She holds her breath as the scissors pierce the flesh. The sound of three layers of muscle (from inside to the outside: _transversus abdominus, internal obliques, external obliques_ ) separating under metal is wet and fleshy.

Vahlen peels open the abdominal cavity. Isopropanol wells up at the edges of the cut muscle, muddied by coagulated blood. The intestines are jumbled together, curled pink-grey noodles held together by clouded mesentery. Along the side, she can see the pea-pod shaped uterus. The stomach curls under the right side of the burgundy-colored liver. It looks almost exactly like the diagram of the human body in her textbook, opened up for comparison.

Except…

“Where’s the gallbladder?” Vahlen asks, lifting the lobes of the liver.

Mrs. Pfeiffer pauses by her table. “Though we descend from a common ancestor, some animals have lost shared traits. The rat lacks a gallbladder.”

“One less thing to look for,” Heidi says, poking at the stomach with the blunt end of a probe.

“Isn’t it strange how similar it looks?” Vahlen breathes. She begins untangling the small intestine from the large intestine, feeling the organs squish between her gloved fingers. "If it stood upright, it would look just like us."

"You're overthinking it," Heidi says.

(She isn't.)

 

**Human (Age 50, Male, Caucasian)**

 

The lab instructor gives the final directions as the medical students stand by their tables. Vahlen’s “silent teacher” lies before her on the slab.

The file says the man was fifty when he died. He knew he was going to die. Instead of letting his body waste away, deep in the black earth, the man generously donated his body to science.

“We gives thanks to our silent teachers,” Dr. Chen says, “and from them, we will learn to help others.”

The autopsy room is filled with hushed, almost reverent ‘ _thank you’_ s.

Vahlen lets her partner cover the man’s face and chest. His head is pillowed on a cushion of ice to keep the brain cool. Like this, it is as if his corpse is merely sleeping, though the pooled blood in his arms and legs marks death’s ownership of his flesh.

She poses her scalpel, and cuts.

It’s just like the rat dissection, all those years ago, but with a twist. At first, the medical students’ inspection is superficial. Vahlen’s partner, Alimohammadi, starts by noting the attachment of the skin to the basement membrane, and through that, to the muscle. The layers of abdominal muscles are firmer in humans, and thicker to the touch.

She falls in love with the way her scalpel peels back layers of muscle and fascia. She cuts through the aponeuroses and tendons with ease.

At last, the abdominal cavity is open. The silent teacher’s liver is speckled yellow with the marks of cirrhosis. She peeks under the lobes. Yes, there is the gallbladder. Vahlen traces an imaginary line, from the crest of the iliac to a third of the way to the umbilicus. She looks for the fold of Treves between the ileum and the cecum, searching for the appendix. No, this man lacks his, probably removed while he was young. Appendicectomies are common surgeries.

When she goes home that night, and washes off the stink of preservatives and coagulated blood, she will feel her belly. Beneath her skin lies a complex network of tissue, all collaborating to make her whole. She will feel a line up from her umbilicus to her sternum, below which lies her stomach, liver and large intestine, and deep to that, the kidneys and spine. Thousands and thousands of cells, communicating in chemicals and electric impulses, all combining to make her. Vahlen will feel how alive she is, hot blood and warm tissue, compared to the grey flesh and plasticized veins of the corpse on the autopsy table.

And she will want to preserve that life.

 

The medical students’ exploration of the human body is slow and methodical, following the curriculum in class. Vahlen is the one to dissect the right leg. The quadriceps femoris, going down the sides of his thigh, is marbled with scar tissue. His anterior cruciate ligament is torn. Alimohammadi dissects the arm. The lab instructor pulls on the supinator muscle to twist the man’s arm in a semblance of life, demonstrating how the body is subject to physics even in death. In his last days, the man’s body had failed him. Vahlen wonders if machines – iron lungs, pacemaker hearts, artificial legs and arms – could have saved him.

(She will stand with Central Officer Bradford, as Dr. Shen discusses his plans to make soldiers into mechanized war machines, and think, _"not this way. This technology was never meant to give life, only to take it."_ )

 

It’s the last day with the silent teacher. Today, they will study the nervous system.

Alimohammadi is the one who takes the saw to remove the calvaria, the top of the cranium. What hides beneath is all that makes humans a human. Not an ape, as intelligent as they may be; not a rat, as similar as their organ arrangement is; not an alien, from some far off star system.

She holds the brain reverently in her hands. Vahlen’s eyes trail over the central sulcus: in front of it is the primary motor cortex, where major decisions to move the body like a wondrous machine are made. Behind the deep groove lies the primary somatosensory cortex, where a series of neurons is linked to every single part of the body. She feels the cut cranial nerves near the brain stem and the pons: in life, they would have conveyed sensory, motor and parasympathetic impulses to the head and neck ( _except the vagus, cranial nerve X, which innervates the viscera as well, and the accessory, cranial nerve XI, which innervates the trapezius of the back,_ she remembers.) Deep inside the brain hides the limbic system, the seat of emotion. Is that where the consciousness hides? So many secrets hide within the mass of nervous tissue before her.

Vahlen holds the sum of a person in her hands.

What a life this man must have had.

She gives thanks as she sets the brain down in the dissection pan, and begins to label its structures.

 

**Mouse genes  
**

 

Dr. Vahlen, former MD, is beginning to hate mice. She remembers chasing the critters out of her childhood home with a broom, but her PhD work in a genetics lab makes has intensified a dislike into a full-blown hatred.

There is a revolution coming in science, which started in the days of Watson and Crick and Franklin. McClintock’s work in transposable elements in maize chromosomes has earned her a Nobel Prize. A fire is building, and Vahlen has left the hospital to chase the flames.

Technology comes fast and furious. What once took weeks to complete by hand in her undergrad now takes days, even hours, by computer and machine. Gone are the days of Sanger sequencing, and the tedious creation of plasmid clones in  _E. coli_ and PCR to get sufficient DNA for analysis. There’s new techniques, _next gen_ as this English lab calls them, like Illumina sequencing – and so much cheaper too! Slowly, humanity is unlocking the mystery of the genome. Soon, humanity will dive into the secrets of their very cells, and see what their DNA – the basic instructions of life – has to say.

Some days, Vahlen misses the buzz of the hospital and the feel of flesh beneath her hands, yielding to her scalpel.

Then she remembers that she doesn’t like dealing with people. Corpses are much easier. Though mice aren’t much better. They’re more apt to bite and scratch than rats. Rats are cute and calmer, which makes it harder when she must gas her specimens to biopsy their livers. Her only consolation is that their deaths are for science, and that they go quickly and painlessly.

(In XCOM, she will receive the fallen soldiers' bodies before they are sent home. She will look at the flesh burnt black and the pink foam from liquefied lungs and intestines burst open from the sheer mechanical force of a Chryssalid erupting out. And Dr. Vahlen will wish for she could have granted them the quick death of CO2 and morphine, because her test subjects fell into a deep sleep before passing away, whereas these soldiers' eyes are wide with fear and they stink of urine and feces as muscles were ripped open and viscera inverted. It reminds her of the emergency room, and how the families of the patients prayed as she rolled the remains of their son or daughter, scraped up from the Autobahn, past them.)

“There has to be an easier way,” she mutters, turning the female mouse on its back. There’s a plug left over from the night’s mating. She only hopes this breeding will produce the Cre-lox mouse she has spent three months slaving over.

Her supervisor laughs. “Go work with _C. elegans_ then. I hear there’s a lab in America doing crazy things with them. Apoptosis or something.”

Vahlen makes a face. “I prefer things with brains.”

“Don’t go looking in the government, then,” a graduate student pipes up.

(They laugh, surrounded by microscopes and clean cages and mice squeaking away. In 2015, Vahlen will remember her innocence as the Commander pleads for more funding while the world burns around them. She will sigh, and remember better days.)

 

**Human genes**

 

For the first time ever, the human genome has been sequenced.

Dr. Vahlen, MD, PhD, mingles among the scientists at the gala. It’s their right to celebrate. She was part of a lab in Germany, part of a worldwide effort to unlock the biggest secret inside the cells of man. There was a competition to sequence the genome first. It matters not. All of humanity has won with this titanic effort. Here, in the base pairs of ATCG that scroll across her computer screen, lies all that makes humanity human. Here are the places that code for the neurons that make brains, and the pacemaker cells that make the heart beat. Here is the culmination of thousands of donors, focused down to two male genetic donors and two female genetic donors into an amalgam representation of every human’s DNA. Here is the culmination of sleepless nights.

There are still pieces of the puzzle missing. The project was only able to sequence euchromatin – most of the DNA in a cell, to be sure – but the rest of the DNA was locked away, bundled in tight packets of proteins. The telomeres ( _repeated sequences that cap the chromosomes of condensed DNA_ ) and centromeres ( _attachment sites so that mitotic cell division creates two twins, two perfectly matched sisters in terms of chromosome number_ ) were not sequenced.

There was competition, to be sure. It was the old story of private vs. governmental work. The numbers that scrolled past her computer screen were no substitute for the feel of muscles yielding to her scalpel or DNA spinning free of cellular debris in the centrifuge.

Scientists from all over the world celebrate their publication in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals. Someone pops a bottle of champagne open. She spots her supervisor, way back in her PhD days, twirling a scientist from America in a quickstep dance.

 _There is still so much work to do_ , Vahlen muses over her glass of wine. They have yet to find the causes of variation among humans. They have yet to discover what cause all these terrible genetic diseases. But her fellows don't share her enthusiasm - at least, not on this night, of cake and champagne and celebration. The thoughts of the wonders left for humanity to uncover are far from their minds. Tonight is a festival of what has already been done and what has just been accomplished, not the long battle and sleepless nights ahead.

_Perhaps, if we knew how similar we all are, when it comes to molecules coiled inside our cells, we would fight less and learn more._

 

**Sectoid**

 

The specimen before her is magnificent in its state of “XCOM-Soldiers-Did-Not-Eviscerate-It-With-Exuberant-Use-Of-Explosives.” It reminds her of her first silent teacher.

Admittedly, her silent teacher did not attempt to murder her or anyone else. She doesn't begrudge the soldiers' desire for revenge. Vahlen only wishes that they would leave more for her to work with.

There is no one to guide her as she cuts down its abdomen, no papers or diagrams to guide her hand. She relies on her memory of a human lying still on a dissection table, her hand steadied by years of practice.

The organs look similar enough: there are tubes, probably a digestive tract, coiled to increase surface area for absorption. No visible genitalia, nor is there any sign of internal sex organs. Vahlen files that away for later: either the sex organs are so alien that they are unrecognizable, or there is heavy genetic modification to subdue the creature to a mysterious other's whims. The rib cage cracks under her blade. She winces at the mistake: she would have liked to examine the ribcage structure. That shows the bones are thin and delicate like a rat's, not thick and heavy like a human's.

At long last, she is done with her external observations of the trunk. Vahlen shivers in her isolation suit. Central Officer Bradford had made her orders clear: she was to investigate the creature's psionic potential, and figure out something fast.

It is time to open the head.

The head is thicker than a human's cranium, requiring a surgical saw to get the skin off, then a power saw to cut off the Sectoid's analog to a skullcap. But at last, she holds its brain, the sum of its being, in her hands. Though larger and more rotund, it is no more different than a human’s brain.

And if it looks like a human, it stands to reason that it may very well act like a human. Form follows function, after all.

 

**Muton**

 

Vahlen motions for the Commander to wait. She powers down the circular saw – what a difference it makes to three inches of layered keratin – and leaves the Muton on the table. Pus yellow ichor flows from the dissection table in rivers. She’s beginning to suspect heavy genetic modification to the circulatory systems of these aliens. Why would creatures diverse as the Seeker, Thin Man and Muton all bleed the same, if their genetic markers suggested little to no common ancestry?

The Commander stands very close to the glass; not close enough to fog it, which would annoy her - Vahlen likes her work space pristine - but close enough that Vahlen can see the color of her superior's iris.

"It's beautiful," her superior says.

Vahlen's hands shake as she recognizes the same awe.

“I should come down to watch more,” the Commander comments, voice muffled through the glass. “Never thought they looked like us inside.”

Vahlen waits for the chamber to decontaminate her isolation suit with powered air and antiseptic. She steps into the antechamber to remove her suit. At last, she peels off her gloves, and drops them into the bin destined for the incineration table.

“Have you any new projects for me, Commander?” the Doctor asks.

“Well, until we recover artifacts that haven’t been blown to pieces, no. How’s the autopsy going?”

“Well. They are remarkably similar to humans. It is as if there is a basic body plan…”

Vahlen prattles on about epigenetic markers and universal codes, from DNA to RNA to protein. She has given the condensed version to Mr. Bradford, but there's something satisfying about rattling off facts about genes like she's talking about the weather. The Commander’s eyes widen as she speaks. Her superior occasionally stops her to ask questions, then listens as she expounds on topics as diverse as hormonal regulation of arterial constriction in humans and the megalencephaly of the Sectoids XCOM has killed.

The doctor feels a spark of kindred – at last, there is somebody who sees the wonder in the body and if only everyone could understand the need, the fire to push further and harder – if only everyone could see science as beautiful and deadly as her scalpel and the corpse peeled open on the table, not just as the weapons that Central Officer Bradford desires and the governments of the world crave… how much better could the world be?

“It would be best if we had a live specimen,” Vahlen concludes. “We would further be able to tease its secrets from its brain.”

“Doctor, you terrify me.” The Commander grins. “What are we waiting for?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I am not a doctor, so there is some heavy interpretation of events. For the less biologically inclined:
> 
> Sanger sequencing, to determine the sequence of DNA, was developed around 1977. Illumina sequencing, which is much faster and cheaper, was developed in 1994. 
> 
> Cre-lox mice are a system used to turn off specific genes in specific tissues. This helps us determine what the genes do. The technique was developed in 1987. It involves breeding a Cre mouse line, then cross-breeding to a floxed mouse (has the sequence to be turned off in between two LoxP sites, at which the Cre recombinase will cut). 
> 
> C. elegans is a species of nematode, a small floppy worm, used in genetic studies. Its role in determining genes used for programmed cell death (apoptosis) was published in the 1986 paper by Horvitz et al. Further studies which found human analogs of these genes were published in 1994.
> 
> Finally, the human genome project was declared complete in 2003. Further research included the HapMap, which tracked common genetic variants in different populations. 
> 
> I like to think of Vahlen as being at the forefront of every advance in genetics. She doesn't strike me as a person who would let the opportunity to learn more go by.


End file.
